comparisons
Free Database Hosting for Your First App: 9 Options With Real Limits
Eight free database hosting options for a first app, from Postgres to SQLite to Redis, with the storage caps, sleep rules and backup gaps you only find after launch. Checked against current docs in October 2026.
Hosting is easy to swap. A database is not. Once real users have saved real data, moving it is a weekend you did not plan for. So pick a free database with your eyes open, because the headline numbers hide the rules that actually bite: sleeping, pausing, missing backups and caps that reset daily instead of monthly.
Match the type to your app first
Most first apps do fine on Postgres. It handles users, orders, posts and everything in between, and almost every tutorial assumes it. SQLite style databases are small, fast and cheap to run, which suits apps with lots of reads. Document databases store loose JSON and feel natural if your data changes shape often. Redis is not a main database at all. It is a fast scratchpad for rate limits, sessions and counters.
Pick the type, then compare the free plans inside it.
Free Postgres options
Supabase
The most popular pick for a reason. The free plan includes a 500 MB database, 1 GB of file storage, 50,000 monthly active users and unlimited API requests, with auth and storage bundled in. The traps: you get 2 active projects, and free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity. A side project you ignore over a holiday will be asleep when you come back. Read the Supabase listing for the full table.
Neon
Neon gives you up to 100 projects, each with 1 GB of storage and 100 compute hours a month, plus branching so you can test a migration on a copy. The database scales to zero after 5 minutes of inactivity. The most common complaint is the cold start on the first request after that nap, and some users report waits of several seconds. See Neon.
Aiven for PostgreSQL
The free plan is $0 with no time limit: one dedicated VM with 1 CPU, 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB of storage. You cannot choose the cloud or region, there is no connection pooling, and you get a single backup for disaster recovery with no point in time restore. Aiven can also shut down free services that sit unused for an extended period. Details on Aiven for PostgreSQL.
Koyeb Postgres
One free instance with 0.25 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB of storage. The limit that matters is 5 hours of compute a month, and the database sleeps after 5 minutes of inactivity. That is a demo database, not an always on one. See Koyeb Postgres.
Free SQLite style options
Turso
The Free plan lists 100 databases, 5 GB of storage, 500 million rows read and 10 million rows written. Read heavy apps will never touch the ceiling. Write heavy ones will meet 10 million writes sooner than they expect. Plans have also moved before: a January 2025 post said edge replication and a few other features left the free tier. Check Turso before you rely on a feature.
Cloudflare D1
D1 gives you 5 GB of storage, 5 million rows read a day and 100,000 rows written a day on the Workers Free plan. When you hit a daily limit, queries return errors until it resets. Performance draws the harshest reviews. One Hacker News commenter who ran it in production for over a year described slow simple queries, so test your own workload early. Here is the Cloudflare D1 page.
Free document and key value options
MongoDB Atlas
The free shared cluster has 512 MB of storage and up to 100 operations a second on shared compute. There is no backup service on the free tier, and commenters report you cannot go back to the free cluster after upgrading. See MongoDB Atlas.
Cloud Firestore
The free quota is 1 GiB stored, 50,000 document reads and 20,000 writes a day, and 10 GiB of outbound transfer a month. It is generous until a listener or a badly written query multiplies your reads. Every query costs at least one read, and past the free quota the bill is the top complaint in reviews. More on Cloud Firestore.
Upstash
Serverless Redis with 250 MB of data and 500,000 commands a month on the free plan. That sounds like a lot until you use it for rate limiting on a busy endpoint. Paid usage is $0.20 per 100,000 commands, so watch the counter. See Upstash.
What breaks first
- Pausing and sleeping: Supabase pauses after a week, Neon and Koyeb sleep after 5 minutes. Your first request after a quiet stretch is slow or fails.
- No backups: MongoDB Atlas free has none and Aiven free keeps a single copy. Export your data on a schedule.
- Daily caps: D1 and Firestore reset every day, so a traffic spike on Tuesday does not carry into Wednesday, but it can take your app down for the afternoon.
- Expiry clocks: some hosts delete free Postgres after 30 days. Render does this, so it is not on this list.
Which one to pick
For a typical indie app with users and a few tables, start on Supabase if you also want auth and storage in the same place, or Neon if you only need Postgres and like branching. Use Turso or D1 when your app already runs at the edge on Cloudflare and reads dominate. Reach for Atlas or Firestore only if your data really is documents. Keep Upstash for counters and rate limits, never as the home of your users.
Whichever you choose, write down the day you will review the plan and set a calendar reminder to export a backup. Free databases are very good right now, and they are also the part of your stack where one surprise costs the most.